When a nationally regarded civil engineer and community health advocate rattled off a list of recommendations for Iola and Humboldt last month, Ryan Sparks’ eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.
Foremost among Mark Fenton’s suggestions — to enhance both communities’ downtown business districts by dedicating second-story floor space for housing — happens to be in Sparks’ proverbial wheelhouse.
Sparks has renovated four second-story apartment complexes in downtown Iola in recent years, most recently the Garlinghouse Building on North Jefferson Avenue earlier this year.
He rattles off a list of others who have done similar upgrades.
“I count 12 downtown units in the past few years that have been upgraded,” Sparks said. “Those were nonexistent units that are now nice living spaces added to the square.
“And this effort is not as organized as you might think,” he continued. “What happens, somebody does a project and people like it, so somebody else says, ‘I’m going to do it, too. And that’s the thing I love about this effort; it’s not just one person. These are business owners and people in the community who share this vision, that there could be nice living units in a prime location in Iola, Kansas.
“These people have done it on their own, with their own private investment to make this vision a reality.”
With the right combination of teamwork and “outside-the-box” thinking, Sparks envisions much more improvement downtown.
“I’ve talked to four people in the past month about continuing this vision,” he said. “I see 12 nice units now. I foresee 30 units around the square, or maybe more than that. I don’t think 30 is a limit. I see 30 as a goal.”
WHILE SPARKS remains excited about downtown developing more apartments, he understands more must be done to meet the ongoing housing crunch throughout Allen County and southeast Kansas.
To that end, he recently asked area renters to fill out an anonymous survey via Facebook an assortment of issues related to living in Iola or Humboldt; 120 responded.
“My hunch going into this was renters would tell us what they need, what they expect,” he said. “They did.”
With a few mild surprises, many of the results confirmed his suspicions.
For example:
— Nearly 80 percent of renters pay less than $600 a month for rent; the median rent among those completing surveys was between $400 and $500.
— Affordability (55 percent) and quality of the home (28 percent) were by far the two most important factors for selecting a place to live.
— Renters, by and large, have an “average” rating for their overall experience renting in the area (37.5 percent), while nearly three times as many reported a somewhat or very negative experience (47 percent) vs. a somewhat or very positive experience (15 percent).
— Nearly 80 percent of renters would like to own a home in the area in the near or distant future.
— Lack of available financing (57 percent) was the biggest barrier preventing those from buying a home now.
ONE OF THE biggest surprises from the survey was the overwhelming preference of living in a house over an apartment.
Of the 120 surveys, 104 (87 percent) favored a single-family home over living in an apartment complex or duplex. Roughly 10 percent (13 votes) had no preference.
“This doesn’t discourage my attempt to add (apartments), but it does show me if we’re going to hit the core of the housing problem on its head, we’re going to have focus on providing more single family homes,” Sparks said.
Because quality and affordability rank so much higher than location, Sparks is optimistic apartments in downtown will fill up as renters learn about the opportunities locally.
“Almost 90 percent want an affordable, decent quality home,” he said. “If that’s Humboldt or Iola, that’s where they’re going to go.”
HOWEVER, landlords and tenants find themselves between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to investment vs. recouping costs.
“I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve rehabbed probably 30 homes myself,” Sparks said. “You can’t put $50,000 into a house and ask $300 a month for rent. That just doesn’t work.
“If Iola and Allen County are really going to try and solve this problem, it’s going to take a team approach,” he continued. “It’s not fair to ask a single investor to do this all himself.”
That’s where one key element makes downtown development possible.
“When these downtown buildings were built, they were designed to have multiple units in them,” Sparks explained. “There may have been office space upstairs in some of them. In some cases, they were living quarters.”
A building owner with no upstairs apartments essentially depends solely on revenue from the downstairs business to pay for all of its revenue.
“That gets expensive when you’re talking about $300 a month alone just to insure a building,” Sparks said. “And that’s not counting taxes, utilities” and business expenses.
“But if we can get people living upstairs, that brings in added revenue. We’re spreading out the burden.
“Renters in these towns are crying out for help,” he concluded. “They listed frustrations with quality and affordability. If anything, if this town can look at this problem and say, it’s all of our problem, then they can establish a plan together. We need Iola, Humboldt, Allen County, and investors with skin in the game. We need to get together and say, how can we fix this.”
